www.independent.ie/national-news/probe-i...-chiefs-3040011.html

'SECRET' top-up payments to disability charity chiefs on salaries up to €150,000 are being investigated by Department of Health officials.

The officials are conducting a high-level probe into how the charities are spending €1.5bn in state funding.

They now believe some senior executives are getting extra payments on top of their salaries.

But a number of the charities are refusing to divulge details of any bonus or top-up payments, which in some typical cases are suspected to range in value between €22,000 and €43,000.

Despite the huge amounts of state funding they receive, Health Minister James Reilly does not have the power to compel them to give details of salary and top-up payments if these are paid for by fundraising or donations.

Suspicions about the extra payments were outlined in an internal Department of Health memo obtained by the Irish Independent under Freedom of Information rules.

www.independent.ie/national-news/tsunami...e-years-2457820.html

A trawl of Bank of Ireland Red Cross accounts around the country led to the uncovering of 49 unreported accounts holding €214,000, an internal review has found.

And the investigation into how €162,000 of that money collected for the Asian tsunami lay untouched for over three years in a Tipperary bank account found that there were serious administrative failures in the management of some of the money collected for the disaster.

The report, which was carried out by an independent accounting firm appointed by the Red Cross to look into the issue, shows that there was no misappropriation or mis-allocation of funds collected for the 2005 appeal.

The review recommends that other banks and the credit unions should now be asked what accounts they hold "to ensure that no further situations like Tipperary exist".

The formal existence of the Tipperary account was only discovered due to the Bank of Ireland trawl after three-and-and-a-half years, in 2008. The report said that while it was evident that no monies were missing and that there was no evidence of any movement in the account from 2005 to 2008 when it was closed, it was a cause of concern that there was no official report to Red Cross HQ concerning the account

Forgotten bank accounts, sounds like bertygate alright Andy